Eighteenth-Century Quakerism and the Rehabilitation Of
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Lincoln Institutional Repository ‘Propper and safe’ to be published: eighteenth-century Quakerism and the rehabilitation of seventeenth-century radicalism. Erin Bell, University of Lincoln, UK According to the English edition of Willem Sewel’s History of the rise, increase, and progress of the Christian people called Quakers (1722 [1717]), the first-generation Quaker preacher James Nayler rode to Bristol in early November 1656, and passing through the Suburbs of Bristol, one Thomas Woodcock went bare-headed before him; one of the Women led his Horse, Dorcas, Martha and Hannah spread their Scarfs and Handkerchiefs before him, and the Company sung, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of Hosts...Thus these mad People sung, whilst they were walking through the Mire and Dirt, till they came into Bristol, where they were examin’d by the Magistrates, and committed to Prison....1 Condemning his followers as mad for their treatment of Nayler who, in his entrance to Bristol imitated Jesus’ into Jerusalem, this version of Nayler’s ‘fall’ demonstrates the changes which had taken place in Quakerism between the 1650s and the eighteenth century. If, as Richard Bailey suggests, early Quakerism was a ‘thaumaturgical (signs and wonders) movement’2 then signs such as Nayler’s, whether the result of ‘celestial inhabitation christology’, the ‘flesh and bone’ presence of Christ in the believer3 or, as Leo Damrosch claims, ‘a single symbolic act condensing a number of competing Quaker beliefs’4, were to be expected, if not easily explained. Although, as Richard Vann asserts, ‘beliefs of Quakers are almost uniquely hostile to history’5 and early Quakers aligned history with superfluous tradition, detrimental to true 1 appreciation of the inward voice of God, by the early eighteenth century the first Quaker histories had appeared. Analysis of such works, and those barred from republication, demonstrates how eighteenth-century Friends tried to change the identity of Quakerism, including that of individuals, by rewriting history. Nayler’s behaviour and subsequent punishment for blasphemy have been interpreted as evidence of ‘the ever-recurring tension between idea and power...liberty and authority’6 and led to increased persecution of Friends, who gradually renounced much of their enthusiastic behaviour. Scholars of Quakerism have debated the extent, though, to which Friends renounced ‘godly radicalism’, as Catie Gill describes it, and withdrew from the ‘world’.7 Leo Damrosch and Adrian Davies, for example, have considered the theological and social shift in Quakerism to be one from radical millenarianism in the 1650s to late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century respectability.8 Bailey has dated their withdrawal as beginning shortly after the Nayler dispute.9 William C. Braithwaite also described, almost a century earlier, the ‘worthy and drab respectability’ personified by Friends such as George Whitehead, who was most active and influential in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.10 Michele Lise Tarter too has commented both upon the rejection, from the 1670s, of women’s mystical writings, and the expectation that writers be ‘still and quiet’, in contrast to the earliest years of Quakerism. She concurs with Luella Wright that this led to an eighteenth-century period of literary ‘barrenness’.11 That is not to suggest that all scholars of Quakerism view the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a period of quietism. Referring particularly to the tithe testimony, Nicholas Morgan has asserted that a ‘sense of outward mission’ continued until the 1730s. He rejects the idea that eighteenth-century Friends resigned from ‘the early Quaker wish to convert the world’ and suggests that they ‘refused the acceptance of standards which compromised the 2 precepts of their earliest co-religionists.’12 However, in the case of contentious early works, eighteenth-century Friends were willing to compromise in cases such as Nayler’s to secure their future. Described by Whitehead in 1716 as being amongst those who had ‘crucified to themselves the Lord of Life afresh, and put him to open Shame and Reproach’13 Nayler was eventually accepted back into the fold, and A Collection of Sundry Books, Epistles and Papers was published in the early eighteenth century, although censored by the editor Whitehead, and others. The twenty-three excluded works were not silently left out. Instead, they were listed as ‘His Controversial Books not Reprinted in this Collection, in the Years, 1655 and 1656.’14 The silencing of radicalism was in part achieved by the Second Day Morning Meeting, one of several London meetings established in the decades following the Restoration, as well as the regular meetings for worship and business organised in each county. Central meetings were active in shaping the collections of Quaker records and the Second Day Meeting in particular, founded by the Quaker leader George Fox in 1673 to consider works for publication, was believed by critics within the Society to suppress individual inspiration whilst favouring uniformity and avoiding of controversy.15 Although Thomas O’Malley has considered its role before the Toleration Act, and Sheila Wright has addressed its influence in the later eighteenth century,16 there has been little consideration of the Meeting’s activities in the intervening period aside from Tarter’s brief comments on the rejection of prophetic writings, often by women, as ‘not mete to print’17 and Bailey’s comments on its efforts to transform the Quaker Christ into an inward, mystical figure.18 However, as Kate Peters suggests, much information about the earliest Friends is ‘directly attributable to the efforts of a later generation of Quakers’ keen to prevent ‘the publication of enthusiastic or politically dangerous works’.19 As the emerging sectarian identity of Quakerism during the 1650s was only ‘in the process of being formed’20, later Friends 3 had to remould this fluid earlier identity, adding to their unwillingness to address the issue. Further, after Nayler’s trial several anti-Quaker writers had produced ‘histories’ of the Friends, emphasising his conviction for blasphemy. These included William Grigge’s The Quaker’s Jesus of 1658 and Richard Blome’s Fanatick History of 1660.21 Grigge described Quakers as ‘deluded and seduced Souls’ led astray by Fox and Nayler.22 Blome, although claiming to consider all types of ‘fanaticism’, used the Nayler episode to depict English Quakerism. In response, Nayler blamed ‘the many cruel Spirits, who pursued my Soul unto death’.23 However, despite his protestations, anti-Quaker works from the mid-seventeenth century were still used, and in some cases disseminated overseas, during the later seventeenth and eighteenth century. These included the German version of Blome’s work, published in 1701.24 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that in 1677 the Meeting agreed that the proposed volume of Nayler’s collected works ‘be suspended till it be taken into further & more generall Consideration by the 2d dayes meeting’.25 Some historians have suggested that Fox actively blocked the project.26 It was only mentioned again in 1698, when a letter from Thomas Hammond of York about Nayler’s works was acknowledged, and George Bowles was ‘desired to get JNs Recantation.’27 Two months later Bowles brought this, and John Whiting provided a list of Nayler’s works. The business relating to Nayler’s books continued in a similar fashion until 1700, when the Meeting declared that if the Yearly Meeting insisted on publication, ‘something by way of Advertizement should be writt to cleare Fri[en]ds and Truth from the Reproach yt came by him.’28 The proposal was only renewed in 1710, after pressure from some Friends earnest to print his works ‘either with or without this Meet[ing]s Approbation.’29 It was then agreed that the relevant minutes, spanning more than thirty years, be produced for inspection. Nayler’s works were also to be gathered together and considered alongside ‘letters and Testimonys of Friends as tend to clear Truth and Friends from ye offence given by him and his followers when Clouded.’30 The Meeting agreed to include works 4 considered ‘propper and safe’, and in one case passages safe to be abstracted.31 As Tarter suggests, such amendments formed part of a ‘wave of censorship and controlled historiography’ aiming to ‘eradicate all traces of enthusiasm’.32 By 1712 Thomas Raylton had examined which works had been read and approved, and which were still unread. In 1714 approval was finally given for publication, ‘when Opportunity presents’.33 It did not for another two years. As part of his attempt to understand what Nayler thought that he was doing34 Damrosch has identified the need for historians of seventeenth-century Quakerism to be aware of silent alterations to those works included in the eighteenth-century collection of Nayler’s works before they were considered fit to be republished. Damrosch is by no means the first scholar to identify such changes; Braithwaite too comments on the amendments made to Robert Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678 [1676]) when it was translated from Latin, describing the English version as ‘carefully revised.’35 David J. Hall has concluded that Friends believed that the first edition of a work was not necessarily the most true, and edited passages accordingly.36 However, more significantly, Damrosch has not considered the content of works which were not republished; or the extent to which the translation of key Quaker works affected the version of Quaker history available, and the conclusions of modern scholars. Although, as he asserts, amendments were made to the Collection, other works were excluded by those seeking to redeem an infamous figure. Their reasons for doing so and the ways in which they represented Nayler are interlinked, and served to rehabilitate a contentious figure from the Quaker past.